Facility needs notice before you die

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - For Drexel Douglas, losing his mother was bad enough.

But when her Albuquerque nursing home decided to keep thousands of dollars in rent for the next 29 days, Douglas got angry.

“She passed away on Christmas Day, and we discovered three days later our check for the next month cleared the bank,” he said. “So that was a little disturbing.”

Virginia Douglas was 95 when she died. She spent the last 18 months of her life at an assisted-living facility in northeast Albuquerque run by Highpointe Care Inc.

During that time, Drexel Douglas said he paid the facility about $75,000 to care for his mom and felt he had a relationship with the caregivers.

“(I) said we’d kind of appreciate a refund on that,” he said. “And she talked like it was something to do with the board had to meet.”

Instead of getting his money back, Drexel Douglas received a letter.

“(It said) ‘We require 30 days notice of intent to vacate, just like any other apartment or rental facility renting by the month, and we charge accordingly,’ ” Drexel Douglas said. “That’s pretty cold.”

So even though Virginia Douglas died on the first day of the rental month – it runs from the 25th to the 24th – Highpointe would be keeping the nearly $4,000 monthly rent payment, according to the letter.

But later in the letter, Highpointe made a strange admission. The facility representative said that not only would they keep the rent, they had already moved another resident into her vacant apartment, according to the letter.

News 13 went to the facility to try and find out what happened.

“It’s incredibly immoral to charge two people for the same bed,” said Faye Janzad, president of Highpointe. “You would have to be retarded to do that.”

Janzad insisted that Virginia Douglas’ apartment had not been re-occupied and that the person who wrote the letter made a clerical error.

“I think what he did is he worked off another letter and mixed the facts,” she said. “I can tell you (that) guaranteed--100 percent.”

News 13 asked Janzad if she could explain what the writer was thinking.

“Maybe this person had ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and he made a mistake,” she said. “But I’m telling you the truth. You could never move in a person without moving their medication and their pharmacy records.”

Asked if she meant that her office manager has a learning disability, Janzad said, “I don’t know. Maybe he does.”

Janzad also said that Drexel Douglas should be due at least a partial refund of the rent. But though she’s the president, she insisted she had no authority to make that happen.

The reaction left Drexel Douglas frustrated. But he had some advice for anyone with a relative in an assisted-living facility.

“Get your loved one to let you know 30 days in advance when they’re going to pass away if this is the kind of people you’re going to be dealing with,” he said.